Michael Barone was formerly a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report. He grew up in Detroit and Birmingham, Mich. He graduated from Harvard College (1966) and Yale Law School (1969), and was an editor of the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Law Journal.

Barone served as law clerk to Judge Wade H. McCree Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 1969 to 1971. From 1974 to 1981, he was vice president of the polling firm of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. From 1981 to 1988, he was a member of the editorial page staff of The Washington Post. From 1996 to 1998, he was senior staff editor at Reader's Digest.

Barone is the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National Journal every two years. The first edition appeared in 1971, and the 17th edition, The Almanac of American Politics 2004, appeared in July 2003. He is also the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (Free Press, 1990), The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again (Regnery, 2001) and the just-released Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation's Future (Crown Forum, May 2004).

Over the years, Barone has written for many publications, including The Economist, The New York Times, The Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, National Review, The American Spectator, American Enterprise, The Times Literary Supplement and The Daily Telegraph of London. He is a contributor to the Fox News Channel and has appeared on many other television programs.

Barone lives in Washington, D.C. He has traveled to all 50 states and all 435 congressional districts. He has also traveled to 37 foreign countries and has reported on recent elections in Russia, Mexico, Italy and Britain.

Forty-seven years ago, the musical "Hair" opened on Broadway. Elderly mavens -- the core theater audience then, unlike the throngs of tourists flocking to cheap movie adaptations today -- were instructed that America was entering an "Age of Aquarius." The old moral rules were extinct: we were entering a new era of freedom, experimentation and self-expression.

"Words mean what they say," I wrote in my Washington Examiner column one week ago. But, as I added, not necessarily to a majority of justices of the Supreme Court. The targets of my column were the majority opinions in King v. Burwell and Texas Department of Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project.

The Fourth of July is a time to remember Americans who have contributed much to their country, and this Fourth weekend is a good time to remember two such Americans who died in recent weeks -- and whom I'd had the good fortune to know and joust with intellectually since the 1970s -- Allen Weinstein and Ben Wattenberg.

Is the world back to where it was around the year 1800? One could come to that conclusion after reading British historian John Darwin's recent book "After Tamerlane," which assesses the rises and falls of empires after the death in 1405 of the famously bloodthirsty Muslim Mongol monarch.

Negative news for Clinton's prospects comes in the latest Quinnipiac polls in the key mega-states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In each of them, she leads or ties Republican opponents, though in many cases not by statistically significant margins.

American presidents have greater leeway on foreign policy than on domestic issues. Just see how President Obama is forging ahead to an agreement with Iran opposed by large majorities in Congress and among voters.

Lyndon Johnson used to say that some of his colleagues were so politically inept they couldn't find their posteriors -- actually, he used a coarser word -- with both hands. Last week Barack Obama showed that, as a legislative strategist, he belongs in that category.

Another election, another surprise. Actually, two elections, in two countries last weekend, with surprisingly pleasant surprises. And in two very large countries: Turkey (population 82 million) and Mexico (119 million), both very important to the United States.

Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 by running as a different kind of Democrat from previous nominees. Hillary Clinton, Anne Gearan of The Washington Post reports, is hoping to win the presidency in 2016 by running as the same kind of Democrat as the current incumbent.